biology

This is an interactive poem-fiction hybrid exploring unexplored taxonomies through a touch focused 3-D depth experimental interface. To understand, to translate the world, the objects and creatures and geographies around us, into meaningful (meaningless?) symbols, shareable concepts, we developed language. Then to further understand the differences and similarities of everything around us, to narrow down and dissect function and association, we created labels, categories and systems of taxonomy. And while these developed taxonomies and hierarchies are useful to organizing and departmentalizing our complex land/city/culture/art/literary-scapes, they can also hinder new possibilities and understandings. What if defining the function of the lung or leaves limits alternative and possibly powerful uses, keeps us from exploring what some might call “fringe” science? A Nervous System explores these alternative understandings of biological organisms, systems and organs. Through interactive ficto-future stories, poetic diagrams, it examines narratives arriving from chance situations where the mundane turns extraordinary, and what we understand about how our bodies and creatures work is altered, in the most extreme ways. (Source: ELO 2015 catalog) A Nervous System Interactive Fiction/Poetry Artwork An interactive poem-­‐artwork hybrid examining the abundance of taxonomies and the near infinite number of interconnected biological systems in the environment, and explored through an interactive 3-­D depth interface. To understand, to translate the world, the objects and creatures and geographies around us, the near infinite number of systems, abundantly expanding and contracting, into meaningful symbols, shareable concepts, we developed language. Then to further understand the differences and similarities of everything around us, we created labels, categories and systems of taxonomy. And while these developed taxonomies and hierarchies are useful to organizing and departmentalizing our complex biomes and biology, they can also hinder new possibilities and understandings. What if defining the function of the lung or leaves limits alternative and possibly powerful uses, keeps us from exploring what some might call “fringe” science. (Source: http://www.secrettechnology.com/)

Ethereal Landscapes is an interactive computer artwork that employs language in the form of barcodes as the interface between a physical object and a virtual space. The user is immersed in a generative video and audio database synchronized in real-time through scanning the barcodes on each page of the photographic artists’ book. This collaborative piece challenges traditional notions of the book-object (as static and non-aural), and of video/audio (as passive and linear) by integrating the interactivity of turning a book’s pages with projected moving images and sound.

Mirroring the interconnectedness of the formal level, Ethereal Landscapes investigates the relations between life as seen on a biological level and our quotidian human experience. The images from the book are referenced throughout the video; their combination with found and created sounds entwine together in a poetic arc around the processes of life, the passage of time and our un-deniable mortality.

(Source: Artists' description for ELO_AI)